Transfer to New Hopper

[OhioDon]

I recently received the Dish upgrade and my Hopper and Joey started having problems; pausing while navigating menus, black screen, etc. I called and Dish will upgrade me to Hopper 3 for $100 and a wireless Joey for $25. They are scheduled to come Friday for the install. (She was going to charge for the service call but she agreed to waive that charge).

If I understood her correctly, Dish does not support moving my recordings to the new Hopper 3 but I could do it with my own hard drive. On my current Hopper HPR2000, under "diagnostics" - "tools" there is "Restore Recordings" and it says "Retrieve your DVR recordings from another Hopper". Then it says "get ready to plug an Ethernet cable into each Hopper". Will the technician make this transfer for me when he brings the new Hopper 3 and wireless Joey?

If not, and I need to connect my own hard drive: the external hard drive I have available is powered through USB. Will this work to transfer my recordings?

 

[Bobby]

It might, USB powered External HDs are not supported but often work. If it doesn't, you can simply purcase an inexpensive usb hub and accomplish the same thing as an external powered EHD.

 

[OhioDon]

It might, USB powered External HDs are not supported but often work. If it doesn't, you can simply purcase an inexpensive usb hub and accomplish the same thing as an external powered EHD.

My hard drive works. But, how do I select ALL recordings including the ones that are in folders?

 

[navychop]

One by one.

 

[Partysox]

My hard drive works. But, how do I select ALL recordings including the ones that are in folders?

As navychop said 1 recording at a time,do this slow.

 

[OhioDon]

One by one.

Will the recordings stay in folders on the hard drive?

 

[Partysox]

I don't think so not positive, they will just be in a row. Have you done a test transfer?

 

[GPM]

I just did this when going from two HWS to two H3's. I copied all recordings on each HWS to an external drive. All recordings went into the same folders on the external drive. I just finished moving them back to the new H3's. Give yourself plenty of time, its a slow process. For some reason I did have a few shows that would not copy to the external drive. They took the full amount of time and when they got to the final 5 seconds the process stopped and a message stating the process finished with errors appeared. That happened on 4 or 5 shows out of about 100.

 

[OhioDon]

I don't think so not positive, they will just be in a row. Have you done a test transfer?

I'm transferring a big folder that had about 150 recordings. Says it will take 923 minutes yet so I'm going to bed.

Does anyone know if the technician would make the transfer for me with an Ethernet cable when he brings the new Hopper 3?

 

[Partysox]

Good luck on the transfer, I think you said dish said they don't support the transfer so my guess no.

 

[peggy97850]

As long as your older Hopper has the new software interface recordings can be transferred to Hopper 3 over ethernet. It's very, very slow though & tech's don't have time to sit around & wait, so it's up to you to do it beforehand. Even transferring that much to EHD will take hours, & it's best done in small batches to avoid corruption issues. Trying to do that much all at once is asking for problems. DISH does not recommend using USB powered drives.

 

[navychop]

Direct connection between Hoppers is slower than using an EHD.

 

[bwexler]

I had the same dilemma a few weeks ago. I told the CSR and the install tech that I would keep the old HWS long enough to transfer all the files to the new H3.
The tech had no idea that a transfer could be done or how to transfer preferences and scheduled recordings through the remote.
I discovered that you cou needed to have the new CUI on the old HWS so I forced the update.
Next I connected my Ethernet cable from the HWS to the H3 , this is not the same Ethernet cable that connects to the Internet. Then there is a menu item under settings that allows a transfer of ALL recordings from one Hopper to the other, unattended. I only had about 1200 recordings on the HWS so it took over 4 days. However I could record and watch new shows during the process.
If you have more than a few recordings, this is the method I recommend. Since my HWS was 99% full and I was also recording new shows the transfer failed when the H3 was full. I did get all but about 2 dozen shows, which I will leave for Dish to deal with.

 

[OhioDon]

The technician said he could have Dish send me a box to return the old Hopper after the transfers completed. But, he thought they were done so he took it with him. Oh well, I was able to move a bunch of our recordings to an external drive before he came so we still have some of them.

Hopper 3 and wireless Joey are nice!

For some reason, the wireless Joey lost it's connection overnight. I easily reconnected this morning so we'll have to see if it happens again.

 

[pattykay]

I just did this when going from two HWS to two H3's. I copied all recordings on each HWS to an external drive. All recordings went into the same folders on the external drive. I just finished moving them back to the new H3's. Give yourself plenty of time, its a slow process. For some reason I did have a few shows that would not copy to the external drive. They took the full amount of time and when they got to the final 5 seconds the process stopped and a message stating the process finished with errors appeared. That happened on 4 or 5 shows out of about 100.

Were they recent recordings? I have found that recordings that are still in the PTAT folder will not transfer to a hard drive until after the PTAT save period (usually eight days) has passed. That was on an original Hopper with the old UI, though, so it may not apply to your situation.

 

[GPM]

Were they recent recordings? I have found that recordings that are still in the PTAT folder will not transfer to a hard drive until after the PTAT save period (usually eight days) has passed. That was on an original Hopper with the old UI, though, so it may not apply to your situation.

No, they were at least a month or two old. And, if I recall they may have been recorded OTA. I doubt that was the problem though as I had other OTA recordings that transferred fine. Interestingly I had two different series with 4 or 5 episodes that would not transfer as a folder. When I tried to transfer the episodes one at a time, one of the series transferred all but one episode, on the other series none of the episodes would transfer. Needless to say, the day before my install was partly spent doing some binge watching.